1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic accessories. Specifically, and not by way of limitation, the present invention relates to a grip attachment providing camera control for an electronic device such as a mobile phone.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of digital cameras, photography has become more popular than ever. Digital cameras enable users to take and store many photographs. Because of their compact size, digital cameras are easy to carry, thereby allowing many people to always have quick access to their cameras. However, as popular as digital cameras have become, mobile phones with their highly capable camera functions, have literally changed photography in a completely different way. These camera phones are capable of taking high resolution photos and incorporate many photographic features found on most digital cameras. Touch screen telephones are particular popular whereby a user interfaces with the camera by using the touch screen. However, these touch screen camera phones suffer from several disadvantages. First, a user cannot easily hold a phone with just one hand when taking photographs or video segments. With touch screen phones, a user usually uses both hands where the user's first hand holds the camera while the user's second hand manipulates the camera functions by touching the touch screen. This is a very cumbersome process where a user typically uses both hands to take a photograph. Many traditional cameras, prior to mobile camera phones, often used a hand grip located on one side of the main body of the camera. Oftentimes, the hand grip incorporated a shutter release on the hand grip which enabled a user to grasp and take a photograph with just one hand. It would be advantageous to have an apparatus which enables a user to conveniently take a photograph or video from a mobile phone with just one hand.
There are existing phone cases which enable a user to take a photograph by depressing a button on the case. However, none of these existing cases enables a user to easily grasp the camera body and take a photograph with just one hand. U.S. Pat. No. 8,244,299 to Bishop provides a grip attachment for a mobile phone which enables a user to grasp and control a camera function of the mobile phone with one hand. However, Bishop does not allow ease in carriage of the grip and mobile phone. In particular, with the grip attached to the mobile phone, the mobile phone is difficult to store in small areas, such as pockets.
It would be advantageous to have a hand grip adapter which is easily attached to a mobile phone and enables a user to manipulate the camera functions from the hand grip without touching the touch screen while simultaneously allow ease in carriage in small areas. It is the object of the present invention to provide such an apparatus.